Ryan Claytor is a trailblazer in comics education whose passion for teaching and talent as an award-winning comics artist and creator is fueled by his love of the expressive medium.
Since joining Michigan State University’s Department of Art, Art History, and Design in 2008, Claytor has built a thriving academic and creative comics community at the university, having launched the first comics studio course in MSU’s history and later establishing the interdisciplinary Comic Art and Graphic Novels minor. He also has served as Director of the MSU Comics Forum since 2009. This nationally recognized multi-day event brings together comics creators, scholars, and fans from around the world.
Now an Assistant Professor of Comics and Graphic Novels and Coordinator of the Comic Art and Graphic Novels minor at MSU, Claytor has spent two decades self-publishing work that has garnered critical acclaim, including first place in the Graphic Novel category at the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo. His newest work, “One Bite at a Time: 20 Years of Elephant Eater Comics,” is a testament to his career, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the process and artistry that have defined his legacy thus far.
When Claytor joined MSU in 2008, he decided to teach a comics studio class. At the time, studio programming for comics at Michigan State University was non-existent. The class ended up being over-enrolled and has continued to be offered ever since. That class also served as the foundation for which Claytor built an entire comics program, which includes the interdisciplinary Comic Art and Graphic Novels minor that is shared between the Department of Art, Art History, and Design and the Department of English.
Claytor now teaches all levels of comic studies, from fundamentals to advanced classes, and mentors aspiring comic artists. Every comics class he teaches, whether introductory or advanced, culminates in a professional development activity where students sign and sell the comic books they create in class at a local store.
“They work the whole semester in order to complete a book in three months. They’re also taking other classes too, so it’s really a tall ask for them to do that, but they make it happen,” Claytor said. “I’m really proud of my students, and I think they really get a lot out of that culminating activity where they sell their books. I want them to see that their art has value and we’re not just doing this for busy work.”
Claytor’s contributions also extend beyond the classroom. For the past 16 years, he has led the MSU Comics Forum, a multi-day event that includes keynote speakers, an artist alley, academic panel discussions, an exhibition of comic art, comic book discussion groups, and more.
The MSU Comics Forum was held annually for 14 years until 2022 when MSU hosted the Comics Studies Society Conference. Under a partnership agreement between MSU and the Comics Studies Society, the Comics Studies Society Conference is now hosted at MSU every three years with the next MSU-hosted conference taking place this year. The 2025 Comics Studies Society Conference at MSU is scheduled for July 10-12 with the theme being “Resistant, Resilient, and Resolute: Social Justice and Comics.” The MSU Comics Forum also is now a triennial event with the next one set to take place in 2027.
One reason MSU is a perfect place to host these events is that it is home to the world’s largest collection of comics, comic art, graphic novels, and related research materials thanks to the efforts of Randy Scott, a pioneer in Comics Librarianship, who built this world-class comics collection, which now contains more than 350,000 items, some as old as the 1830s up to the present day. The Comic Art Collection is housed within the MSU Libraries’ Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Special Collections.
“The MSU Special Collections’ comics library has been an invaluable resource for me and my students, as it covers such a wide breadth and depth of the medium,” Claytor said. “As I was hosting and producing the MSU Comic Art and Graphic Novel Podcast for several years where I interviewed a variety of prominent creators, I would dig into their body of work available in the Special Collections library in order to better understand their trajectory and develop questions they had not been asked before. A frequent refrain from interviewees was, ‘How did you know that?’ It was all thanks to Randy Scott’s decades of dedication to building our unparalleled collection.”
Claytor’s love of comics began as a child. A reluctant reader, he credits comics with opening the door to storytelling and creative exploration.
“It wasn’t until I got my hands on some comic books that I really started digging in and enjoying reading,” he said. “I’m a very visual person. Comics really captivated both senses, visual and text, and it was interesting to see how they intermix.”
An early favorite of Claytor’s was “Groo the Wanderer” by Sergio Argones for its intricate details and hidden messages. It’s a comic that he continues to collect today and which reignited his passion for the medium.
However, during high school and most of college, Claytor withdrew from comics until the day his friend, Martin Moretti, asked for a ride to a comic book store. It was there that Claytor found a compilation book by his once favorite cartoonist, Sergio Argones, called “Boogeyman.“
“I thought, ‘I used to love Sergio’s stuff. Let’s see what he’s doing now,’” Claytor said. “I was just head over heels after that point. It was all over. Comics, comics, comics, comics from then on.”
Soon after, Claytor began creating his own comics with his first comics being autobiographical. At the time, Claytor gravitated towards true-to-life historical fiction and autobiography in his reading and he decided to create these stories as comic strips.
“Those autobio comic strips were the first comics that I produced,” he said. “I still kind of gravitate and focus on mostly nonfiction work.”
Claytor began self-publishing his work, which, at first, held a certain stigma in his mind. There was a feeling of not being properly vetted, of not working through the correct channels.
“Fast forward to now, and I cannot thank my lucky stars enough that I am still self-publishing,” he said. “It allows me complete creative and financial control over my work and opens the doors for me to do anything I want as long as my audience will support it. Being vetted is overrated. By that, I mean you do not need the permission of a publisher to create your unique vision. I wrongly felt that near the beginning of my creative journey and hope to dispel that myth for others moving forward.”
For Claytor, self-publishing encompasses more than the act of producing and distributing comics independently; it has become a guiding philosophy that encompasses his creative process, career decisions, and engagement with his audience.
In his advanced comics classes, Claytor emphasizes his philosophy of self-publishing, guiding students through the process of crowdfunding campaigns and finding comic book retailers to shelve their work.
“I have students making literally thousands of dollars on their first comic book. If you told me that was possible 20 years ago when I started, I would have thought you were crazy,” Claytor said. “Self-publishing is really coming into its own now, especially with the advent of crowdfunding and being able to harness your audience that you’ve amassed over a number of years.”
Through the course of his 20-year career, self-publishing has allowed Claytor to establish a personal connection with his readers while maintaining full creative autonomy. One of the defining features of Claytor’s self-publishing approach is his meticulous attention to detail, exemplified most prominently in “One Bite at a Time: 20 Years of Elephant Eater Comics,” in which he pulls back the curtain and breaks down his process, from conceptualization to publication, to show readers how he developed some of his favorite pieces.
“This book is not just a collection of pretty pictures,” he said. “Each piece of artwork is paired with process images showing what it took to create the piece.”
The oversized hardcover art book features 260 pages of comics, illustrations, and design created by Claytor over the past 20 years and includes a number of specialty formatting options (gatefold pages, vellum overlays, die-cut reveals, to name a few) all of which serve to bolster the theme of process that runs throughout the book.
“‘One Bite at a Time’ not only shares an approach to artmaking and hopefully empowers others to do the same, but it also allowed me to push my own book design to places it had not been before,” Claytor said. “My hope is that it also sets an example of what a self-published book can be.”
Claytor worked on the book for five years and it was published in June 2024. He recently completed a four-month book launch tour that took him to several locations around the country.
“The tour for ‘One Bite at a Time’ spanned over 20 locations and several states, but some of the most memorable and meaningful events were here in Michigan (at the Abrams Planetarium here on campus and A Novel Concept bookstore in downtown Lansing), as well as a hometown visit to my old haunt, The Book Loft in Solvang, California,” Claytor said. “While many of the locations provided opportunities to meet new readers and expand my audience, these aforementioned venues felt more like a homecoming.”
Claytor’s next large project will be to finish the artwork for a scratch-build electro-mechanical game that he is collaborating on with his best friend and co-writer, Nick Baldridge. Once that’s finished, Claytor says he will begin work on the follow-up issue of the illustrated magazine, “Coin-Op Carnival,” which documents the history and stories surrounding the pinball and pre-video arcade game industry, focusing on devices manufactured prior to 1978.
